Archdiocesan spokesman accuses Mexico City mayor of causing more harm than drug cartels

Father Hugo Valdemar / Mayor Marcelo Ebrard

Mexico City, Mexico, Aug 20, 2010 / 05:50 pm (CNA).- The spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City, Father Hugo Valdemar, has refused to retract his statement that the city's mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, has done more harm to the Mexican capital than the drug cartels. The priest also claimed that the lawsuit Ebrard filed against him is evidence of the mayor’s “fascist” actions.

In an interview with the Archdiocese of Mexico City’s news service, Fr. Valdemar said the law on abortion in the Mexican capital, supported by Ebrard and passed by the Legislative Assembly in 2007, is a sign of the harm he has caused the city.

“Ever since the criminal law on abortion was passed,” more than 42,000 innocent human beings have been killed in Mexico City, he said. “This is double the number that have died in the war against the drug cartels, and yet these crimes are even worse, because the children killed are unable to defend themselves.”

Fr. Valdemar said the lawsuit filed against him by Ebrard has revealed the mayor's true nature as an “intolerant governor with great hatred for the Catholic Church, her pastors” and that he is “consumed by vengeance.”

On Wednesday, the mayor filed a defamation lawsuit against Fr. Valdemar as well as Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez for accusing Ebrard of bribing the country's Supreme Court justices to allow the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

Fr. Valdemar added that Catholics in Mexico City are enduring a sophisticated religious persecution that is aimed at repressing freedom of expression. “Ebrard has made public his fascist style of governing and his undeniable desire to persecute the Catholic Church,” the priest said, underscoring that the governor is acting like another “Francisco Franco or Augusto Pinochet.”